Such comments came as the city marks the 10th National Security Education Day, with a forum held in the afternoon featuring the subject of soft confrontations, or “soft resistance”, which refers to forces that focused on ideological warfare.
Speaking at the forum, Huang Dahui, a School of International Studies professor at Renmin University of China, noted that soft confrontation has emerged as a new battlefield and strategy among major powers and warned that Hong Kong is susceptible to such ideological warfare.
“We all know that Hong Kong is a diverse, open and highly interconnected society,” he told forum participants.
“And therefore Hong Kong’s interests, social composition and ideologies are also very diverse.
“With such features, Hong Kong is more susceptible to this kind of soft confrontation cognitive warfare.
“And soft confrontations are more likely to work here,” he said.
The professor, also the chief expert in the National Security Interdisciplinary Platform, further elaborated that such soft confrontations often come in the form of “spreading fake information” to confuse the public and represent a cognitive theory of western nations.
He called on the SAR government to adopt more technologies to further improve its monitoring and warning systems to guard against such “psychological warfare”, while ramping up its regulations to minimise risks.
Separately, Lau Siu-kai, a consultant to the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, said at the same event that soft confrontations have become even more effective following the rapid development of social media, making them potentially even more powerful than military, diplomatic and espionage measures.
The senior member of the leading national think tank warned that he believes external forces, including the United States, will double down by using soft confrontations to suppress the mainland and Hong Kong.
“Since conducting ‘hard confrontations’ is very difficult at present, soft confrontations have become an important means of political struggle,” he said.
“I expect the United States will increase its efforts to suppress and smear China’s rise and Hong Kong’s development in the future.
“I expect external forces will continue to launch propaganda wars against Hong Kong, intending to cause division and struggle in Hong Kong in order to undermine its international image.”
